


Kindling

by Teyke



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: M/M, PWP, old!Steve porn, post-Battleworld
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-07 15:05:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5460761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teyke/pseuds/Teyke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve's fury burned out a long time ago, leaving hollowness behind. But Tony's always excelled at making him feel <i>something</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kindling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magicasen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicasen/gifts).



> Er, my brain interpreted 'that includes old!Steve porn' to mean 'ESPECIALLY including old!Steve porn'. So I really hope you meant it about the porn. And that you enjoy it, and have a great holidays! 
> 
> Many, many thanks to Sineala, for both betaing and the encouragement.

Steve dropped the case to the floor, and it hit corner-first, denting the hardwood. He felt a brief flicker of shame at that cavalier treatment of somebody else’s home, but Tony could afford it. In the old days Tony’s home had been Steve’s, too, and he’d have felt embarrassment, but not shame. Now he swallowed down both, put his hands on his hips, and demanded, “Tell me the truth.”

Tony rolled his eyes heavenward, stepped forward, and kissed him.

The kiss was full of heat, yet distanced, pressed gently enough that Tony’s beard barely brushed at his skin. Steve’s skin was old, wrinkled, and thin, but the feel of another’s against his own felt like lightning through the pathways of his brain.

He ripped himself away a moment later. What was Tony _thinking?_ None of this made sense. He’d come here to demand answers for the package Tony had left on his doorstep, unguarded but triple-locked and secured. _A cure_ , it had said, and _a gift_ Tony had told him half an hour ago, but the times when Steve would have casually accepted any _gift_ from Tony were long past. Even if they weren’t, he wouldn’t have accepted a cure, when of all the evils of the world, one man's natural old age was by far the least of them. 

He couldn’t just let it lie, either. After everything, for _this_ he needed to know what Tony’s motivations were. 

Or maybe it was just that an hour of arguing with Tony was better than a day spent alone in his apartment, feeling useless and aged in the newly-reconstructed world around him.

But _this_. Steve clenched his hands into fists, feeling papery skin pull tight against knuckles. “Is this some sort of fetish for you?”

Tony had moved back a heartbeat after Steve had, his expression smoothing out, but at Steve’s demand his non-committal poise broke into surprise. “What?”

“This,” Steve said, feeling his face heat with mixed embarrassment and anger. He swept a hand over himself, his whole height, stunted by age as it now was. The hand he used to make the gesture was sinew and bone beneath liver-spotted skin, the hand of a ninety-five-year-old man. He could still feel the tickle that Tony’s whiskers against his skin had left behind. Tony’s expression crinkled, but the temporary wrinkles on his face had nothing on the permanent ones that creased Steve’s.

“...You?”

“My age,” said Steve.

Saying the words made it sound as ridiculous as it was. He could have sex. Maybe he hadn’t thought about it for a while, age being what it was, but it wasn’t like his dick was broken. Tony suddenly taking an interest, though, when he never had before, only _after_ the serum had made him look his age—that was even weirder than Tony taking an interest at all. Things weren’t like that, with Tony. Even when they’d been properly friends, they hadn't been like that.

All Tony did was roll his eyes. The frown remained. “Yeah, Steve, that’s why I’ve been working on a cure for months.”

“I don’t want it,” Steve snapped, the other argument flaring back to life.

“You made that clear.”

“Why would you—” Steve began again, and managed to stop himself, another reason beginning to penetrate his suspicions. Tony stepped back and crossed his arms over his chest, not saying anything. Steve looked at him more closely. Tony was never one to blush, but now that Steve was looking for it he could see the embarrassment written all over him, even as he tried to hide it.

“This was a mistake,” said Tony, breaking the silence that had crept up on them without Steve noticing.

“Wait,” said Steve. There was no strength in his grip, but he stepped forward and laid his hand on Tony’s arm to forestall him as he turned to go, and Tony stopped anyway. “I misunderstood.” A different kind of suspicion was beginning to work its way through his mind, one that seemed unreal, and yet...

“You’re not the only one,” Tony muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry, I was out of line.”

“You weren’t,” said Steve firmly, pulling at Tony’s shoulder and side-stepping so that they came face-to-face. Tony wouldn’t meet his eyes, and it was uncomfortably obvious, as they were the same height. The height that Steve had lost to age was made up for by the fact that Tony wasn’t wearing shoes. It made it easy to lean in and press his lips to Tony’s own. This time, expecting the beard made it less surprising, and he realized that it was actually pretty soft. He brought one hand up, experimentally, to the side of Tony’s face—and stopped. Tony wasn’t kissing back.

Steve stepped back, but this time with something like disappointment. The heat had been there again. He hadn’t imagined it the first time. It felt almost like actual warmth, emotion turned into real energy, a defense against the chill that seemed to have settled permanently into his brittle bones.

“This was a mistake,” Tony repeated, still sounding ashamed.

“Why?” Steve asked, confused himself by his worldview flipping over twice in as many minutes. He had to backtrack. “I reacted badly. That doesn’t mean it’s a mistake.”

“It usually does,” said Tony, looking up from the floor to catch Steve’s eyes, finally. Did he know that way he was looking out from under his eyelashes? Steve wondered.

Then he realized that he was getting distracted by Tony’s eyelashes, and decided that was a pretty clear indication by itself, as if those frissons of warmth, that first tingle of elation in months, hadn’t been enough. “Let’s have only one of us be an idiot at a time,” said Steve. “If you... I don’t understand why you’d...” He stumbled over the words and stopped. Tony had said it wasn’t based on his sudden aging—thank God. But they barely saw each other these days. Tony was busy with his new team, and Steve was... not. If he allowed that Tony was telling the truth...

“Oh, hell,” said Steve, and stepped forward and kissed him again. He made it firmer, this time, rather than experimental, and in response Tony’s lips opened to his own, deepening the kiss instead of just receiving it. It still felt tentative and fragile, and they broke apart after only a few seconds, but Steve didn’t step back. He raised his hands to Tony’s shoulders instead and so he could keep him there.

“After everything,” said Steve, not quite managing to make it a question.

“Through everything,” said Tony, still wary.

Steve grimaced, searching his face. He’d thought this was new, that it hadn’t been this way before, but if he’d been wrong about it being a fetish (thank God) then maybe he’d been wrong about it being new on his side, too. When his obsession had burned the hottest it had always been fueled by betrayal, and at the bottom of betrayal was grief. Tony had made him feel—no. He couldn’t pin that all on Tony. All reasons, arguments, and purposes had eventually slipped away beneath that magma-hot rage, but it was his own decision to give over to it. He’d lost control of himself.

Months of feeling hollowed-out wasn’t any better.

“We need to both stop being stupid,” said Steve, and he kissed him a third time, letting the warmth of Tony’s breath against his mouth kindle something to thaw the ice.

Tony kissed back this time, at first almost reluctantly, and then with more heat, lips parting, his beard rasping against Steve’s skin. The kiss stayed slow, but Steve leaned into it, reaching up with his other hand to unknot Tony’s tie and smoothing out his hands against Tony’s neck, feeling his pulse flutter beneath his skin. They looked wrong there, like gnarled claws around his neck. The rage that had driven him was a shadow-memory, times when he’d dreamed of his hands locked around Tony’s throat now come to life, but instead of strangling Steve ran his thumbs up Tony’s jaw, pulled him in and kissed him deeper. Rage had burned to ash a long time ago, settled into something black and chill, then blown away to leave nothing behind. This was better than that emptiness.

“Why’d you never say anything before?” Steve asked, leaning his forehead against Tony’s.

“The timing was always off.”

“Lie,” Steve said. It was a half-hearted accusation, and he followed it up by pressing a kiss to the side of Tony’s mouth. “I asked for the truth.”

“That’s it.” Tony shrugged. Steve could feel him withdrawing, but he kept his hands on Tony’s shoulders rather than letting him go. They needed to have this out— _Steve_ needed to have this out, figure out what _this_ was. “We’re always busy. Then I didn’t want to mess anything up. Then everything _was_ messed up.”

“And now it’s all so messed up you might as well throw in the towel?” Steve asked, amused despite himself. He undid the top button of Tony’s dress shirt, and maybe that convinced Tony that he wasn’t going to change his mind, because at last Tony began to reciprocate, seeking out the buttons on Steve’s own dress shirt and undoing them with a great deal more care, as if Steve was made of glass... or ninety-five years old, Steve thought, as the chill of Tony’s apartment hit his chest and he shivered. Why’d Tony have to keep the place so damn frigid?

“Bedroom’s warmer,” said Tony, murmuring the words against Steve’s mouth. “If we’re really going to do this.” He tried to pull away at that, abruptly, and Steve followed him, refusing to give in to his second thoughts—or third thoughts, whatever—so easily. The longer he stayed in contact with Tony, the less he was second-guessing this. Sure, sex could get messy, but they’d already fought and destroyed each other. They’d already seen the worst of each other. And the best.

“I’m too old to do this against a wall,” said Steve, capturing Tony’s wrist and stepping past to tug him along. He’d never been to Tony’s apartment before, but he knew the layout, had memorized it months past when obsession and hatred hadn’t quite burned themselves to cold ash. It was warmer in there, by a good five degrees at least, and Steve kicked the thermostat on the wall up another notch as they made their way in.

“You against a wall,” said Tony, finally seeming to get with it and begin participating in earnest, divesting Steve of his shirt while Steve returned the favour, their limbs tangling together, pale and stringy and liver-spotted contrasting against warm, tanned, _youthful_ skin. All of Tony’s scars had faded ages ago, while all of Steve’s had caught up to him at last, and he was expecting Tony to _notice_ , at least, even if he said it wasn’t a fetish. But instead what Tony said was, “Or standing in the open. Christ, the way you stand.”

“What?” said Steve, pressing his cold hands flat against Tony’s smooth stomach. It was warm in here, but his hands were always cold now, and Tony jerked, then snickered.

“Feet apart, chest up—it moves your hips, uh, forward.”

“You make it sound like I strike a pose,” said Steve, and in retaliation took his hands out long enough to unbuckle Tony’s pants, which was, predictably, long enough for them to grow cold again, and then tuck them down Tony’s boxers, finding the warmth between his thighs.

“You _do_ pose,” Tony hissed, curling in and pressing himself against Steve. He tucked his neck into the place where neck met shoulder, breathing out, and Steve felt a shiver run down his spine that had nothing to do with temperature.

“For pictures.”

“And speeches.”

“So do you.”

“Never said I didn’t,” said Tony, the last word coming out somewhat lower than the others as Steve began to make use of his hands’ placement for something other than stealing warmth. “But not sexily—” He gasped and broke off, burying his face against Steve’s shoulder as weathered, leathery hands played over delicate skin. “Unless I’m trying,” he finished, a few seconds later.

Steve thought about how often he’d seen Tony with his hair mussed and his tie loosened, back in the old days. Huh.

At length, they made it to the bed. Tony nearly fell over a few times on the way there, until he wised up enough to step out from his pants instead of shuffling along with them around his ankles, and Steve felt a surge of competitive pride at being able to distract him that much. But when they got to the bed he discovered that Tony had only been waiting for positioning to pay him back in kind, and Steve felt his knees go weak, until he had to put a hand on the covers and then sink down to sit. Tony twitched his legs until they were splayed open, and Steve leaned back, then had to flail an arm up to catch pillows to support his head and shoulders so that his spine would stop protesting. Tony waited patiently, eyes dark and amused, and then leaned in to mouth at Steve’s still-soft cock, teasing it with hands and tongue and mouth.

The kindling of warmth, of interest, was slow to grow from something in his head, and maybe in his belly, to something that could affect his cock. Steve’s hands clenched in the covers for the first minute less so from Tony’s gentle touch, but rather from sudden renewed doubt. These days, he almost never bothered to bring himself off in the shower. He didn’t wake in the morning with an ache between his legs. But as Tony continued, taking Steve’s cock fully into his mouth and sucking gently, then harder, sensations and responses deadened by age proved that they weren’t yet extinct.

 _“Oh,”_ Steve groaned, and relaxed into the mattress and pillows, letting Tony coax his cock to life. When his hands began to hurt, he looked down to realize that his fists were clenched white-knuckled in the covers. Had it been that long? In more ways than one, he supposed, and he managed to do a sit-up. His morning exercise routine made it easy enough, but other muscles, ones that were no longer used to clenching themselves that way, were trembling from the exertion.

All he’d really done was lie back and let Tony do the work. Sure, Tony was good at it—Tony was _amazing_ at it, as Steve’s hardened cock showed—but that was no fun. Tony drew back, looking satisfied at his handiwork, and Steve gave him a grin to dispel the uncertainty he could see despite it, then tugged Tony up onto the bed beside him.

“Not that I wasn’t enjoying it, but this is a two-player game.”

“Oh, are there rules?” Tony asked, his hands still busy with Steve’s cock, keeping it interested, but gentle enough that Steve knew he was in no danger of finishing, not at that pace. They lay side-by-side on the bed, and Tony twisted his neck around enough that Steve would have thrown out his spine, trying the same. Tony, on the other hand, was all fluid grace, nibbling his way down from Steve’s ear, along the tendons of his neck, pressing kisses across his collarbone, occasionally sucking at the skin. He was gentle, maddeningly so, but it would still probably leave faint bruises, and Steve had to resist the urge to tell Tony he wasn’t _delicate_ , damn it, because he was.

He buried his sense of unfairness by being rougher in response, as rough as he wished Tony would be with him. The workout so far, and the room’s increased temperature, had finally made his hands something other than freezing, so he reached down to stroke Tony’s cock, increasing the pressure of his grip and then decreasing it, teasing Tony as surely as Tony was teasing him. And since Tony was twisting himself up like a pretzel anyway, Steve took advantage of it to kiss the parts of Tony’s shoulder and neck that he left exposed, biting with enough force to leave real bruises, ones that would fade long before Steve’s did.

Tony’s breath hitched, and his grip on Steve’s cock tightened as well. “Okay, okay, you’re not made of glass.”

“No,” said Steve, and rolled them a quarter-turn, so that he was on top and Tony was on bottom. Like this, they had more access to all of each other, and he let Tony do the work of reaching up to him, distributing his weight so that he didn’t have to work to maintain the position.

“You could ride me,” suggested Tony.

Steve grinned at the breathlessness in his voice, then winced as the question made it past the distraction clouding his own brain. Certain aspects of getting old were... less than dignified, and should avoid being tampered with at all costs. “That’s, uh, maybe not such a good idea.”

“I could ride you,” said Tony, and reached up to grab Steve’s upper arms, then roll them over with a grace and ease that was almost embarrassing, not because Steve had fought it, but because it had enough care in it to drive home that Tony knew _exactly_ how goddamn fragile Steve was. He woke up in the morning with aching joints instead of an aching cock, but so often he forgot, and expected to be able to just jog up stairs like it was nothing, without need of a handrail or a cane. Here he was getting breathless halfway through sex—at least Tony was, too. But unlike Steve he balanced on knees and elbows, instead of resting most of his weight against the person beneath him.

“You’re in for a long ride,” Steve warned him.

Tony grinned, and reached over to the bedside table, which that last roll had put helpfully in reach. He fumbled out lube and a condom, handing the first to Steve, and squirmed downwards and rolled the condom down Steve’s dick with his mouth, massaging his balls and perineum with fingertips and knuckles.

“Get back up here,” Steve said, squirting lube onto his palm.

It was messy and slippery and haphazard, mostly because Tony kept trying to kiss Steve—on the mouth, on his collarbones, up and over his chest and down each of his ribs—and moving too far away for Steve to reach his ass, until finally Steve reached up with both hands to grab him. Tony’s ass was firm, well-toned, and Steve was torn between admiration and jealousy. Not over his ass. Over the—

Tony must have decided that he was well-stretched enough, because with Steve still clutching his ass he sank down onto Steve’s cock, drawing an unexpected groan from deep within Steve’s chest. He gasped for breath, and Tony stopped, concerned.

“Doing okay there?”

“Better if you’d go on,” Steve managed to get out. If his cock had been slow to join in the fun then it was certainly paying attention _now_ , as Tony slowly slid down the rest of the way, the muscles in his ass clenching around Steve in a rippling pattern that had to be deliberate. Then Tony lifted off, slowly, still keeping it up, until only the tip of Steve’s cock was in him—and down again, and Steve couldn’t help but raise his hips to meet him, making it more of a jolt than that first long, slow slide.

It felt like it took Tony forever to up the pace from something excruciatingly, teasingly slow, and long before then Steve’s hips and lower back let him know that he was going to pay for it tomorrow if he kept trying to buck up like that, so that in the end he had to let Tony do the work. He tried to encourage Tony to go faster by stroking Tony’s cock at a faster pace, hoping to throw off his rhythm, but then Tony distracted him by tweaking his nipples. Unlike most of Steve’s skin, those had become less sensitive, and Steve’s groans were enough to encourage Tony to use more force than on those teasing, barely-bruising kisses. It was as much at the knowledge of the forcefulness as at the sensation itself that had Steve groaning, but it was all amazing, and he gave in to Tony’s pace and kept his own grip light, gasping as Tony rode him with all the energy of a man in his prime.

If Tony _hadn’t_ been such an experienced lover, they’d probably have been at it a lot longer. As it was, Tony was panting from exertion, not just arousal, as Steve felt his own balls draw up, nearing completion. The ripple of Tony’s muscles around him sucked him in, sucked him down, and then he was coming, long waves of orgasm making him thrust without thought, back and spine be damned. His eyes slipped closed, but he felt Tony’s hand join his own around Tony’s cock, pressing Steve’s fingers more firmly around it, and he willingly sped up there, too, until he felt Tony’s come spatter across his chest.

Above him, Tony had stilled, still panting. Steve felt as wrung out as if he’d been the one doing all the work. The days were long past past when a lover coming around him, after he’d already come, would have been excruciating; as Tony lifted off, Steve’s soft cock slipped out amidst a mess of lube, but it only barely twinged as Tony pulled the condom off of him and tossed it ten feet to the basket, his aim perfect. Tony was the one to fetch tissues to clean up Steve’s chest, too, while Steve lay there, feeling boneless and content.

And then moreso when Tony finally stopped squirming and just lay down beside him. With what felt like great effort, Steve rolled over—he snored abominably if he slept on his back, these days—and draped an arm across him.

Tony curled in toward him, returning the favour, and then sighed wistfully. “I should have kissed you ages ago.”

Steve squeezed something, probably Tony’s ass. Maybe his thigh. Sex and exhaustion were muddling his brain, and a nap sounded great. “Mm.”

“If you’d let me fix the serum, we could do that twice a day.”

“Mm.”

“Seriously.”

“Stop talking,” Steve mumbled. But—and maybe it was the sex and exhaustion again—his prior reasons for refusing it seemed less important, now. The satiation running through all his limbs and weighing them down made it hard to keep up a stubborn front. He'd been mistaken about Tony, and maybe he'd been mistaken about his secondary reasons, too. Inequality was inequality, and his own suffering fixed nothing, and maybe was pretty pointless. “Fine.” It came out a nearly inaudible mumble.

“What?” Tony asked, craning his neck around.

 _I’ll tell him in the morning,_ Steve thought, and he drifted off to sleep.


End file.
